Filling Gaps In Old Wood Floors With Rope

How to fill floorboard gaps with rope.

Filling gaps in old wood floors with rope.

Filling floor cracks with lengths of rope might seem strange but ropes made from natural cotton or jute are stainable flexible and they adjust to changing humidity along with the floor. While the rope doesn t look like wood you can stain it to blend with the floorboards and the filled gaps will be much less noticeable than the dark empty gaps. 2 vacuum floor clean of all dust and debris. 1 scrape debris from between flooring planks with putty knife or painter s tool.

Filling large gaps with natural fiber rope is a traditional method commonly used on wide plank floorboards in very old homes. Be sure to use. There will just be less of it. Before you begin filling gaps in old wood floors with caulk make sure you have properly inserted the tube into a standard caulk gun.

You can use rope as a way to fill up a big crack and then just top up with filler so you don t have to use as much filler but the filler itself will still crack and fall out over time. Now you are ready to actually correct the gaps in your hardwood floor. Then place a section of rope on top of the gap and use your fingers a 5 in 1 painter s tool a plastic spackling knife or a similar tool to gently press the rope into the gap. Repeat for each gap.

Now that your rope is stained and dry use a utility knife to cut it into segments equal to the length of the gaps you want to fill. 1 scrape debris from between flooring planks with putty knife or painter s tool. Not only will it be expensive but you will find it will crack out in just about a year due to the seasonal movements of the old floor boards. In this video this old house contractor tom silva explains how to fill gaps in a wide plank wood floor.

A smooth cotton rope stuffed into the gap loaded with carpenters glue will stick very well. Instead use sections of rope. As to filling the gaps don t use some sort of wood filler. As with using pieces of wood you will want to measure the rope to fit.

Set the angled tip of the tube into the gap and pull the trigger. 2 vacuum floor clean of all dust and debris. 3 if desired tint rope with wood stain to match floor. If your gap is truly wide enough to even consider filling it with rope and the gaps don t close up in summer use cork instead.

An old but popular method for filling large gaps requires rope. It should help the filler to go in between the boards a bit more evenly. The old school way i have seen to fill large gaps in wide plank flooring is with rope. This method harkens back to the days of arabian shipbuilding techniques and has an added bonus of providing some minor insulation.